Powershell

Powershell is something I've not really had much cause to use so far - I know, I know, it is really useful and a great way to script things - but with our network being relatively small I still find it most convenient to use the GUIs for most purposes.

However I have just discovered that Quest have some great free tools for Powershell. One is their ActiveRoles Management Shell which is a set of Powershell cmdlets specifically for managing Active Directory. I used this for a task I had which would have taken forever using the GUI — listing and exporting the contents of AD user groups. I just needed to write a simple script which queried the groups and piped the contents into a text file, using this command as shown below:

get-qadgroupmember -identity "usergroup name" >> userlist.txt

Easy.

The next tool, PowerGUI, basically provides a full GUI for Powershell cmdlets. The beauty of this is that you can use Powershell functionality even if you don't know the syntax of the cmdlets. You can use it just as a standard console or there is an editor where you can create your own scripts. The script editor is clever as it provides you with a list of valid options when you start entering the command, similar to how the Powershell command line can be prompted, however it displays it as you type so it saves on keystrokes. Sorry for the quality of the image below but hopefully you get the idea.



PowerGUI also integrates with VMware and Exchange 2007 if you have the Powershall management tools for those.

I'll certainly be useing Powershell more in future now.